


Peculiarity

by elle_stone



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1455631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dead body was the least of their worries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peculiarity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for let's write Sherlock challenge 11, inspired by Julio Cortazar's novel Final Exam. A work in progress.

The fog, John notes, is getting worse. It rolls past their bedroom window in thick clouds, low over the city, obscuring the buildings on the far side of the street, muting the people on the ground. He feels a bit as if he were floating. It’s been here too long, this fog, and there is something wrong about it. Something troubling. People are starting to get nervous.

“Mycroft says it’s nothing, you know,” Sherlock’s voice says, floating up behind him, a low tremor of the air. It is hypnotic and blends with the fog. John glances over his shoulder at him, sprawled out in bed and texting lazily, not even looking up. “The fog is nothing at all. Just… a peculiarity of the weather.”

“That’s not what you’re interested in, then,” John notes, turning around, leaning against the sill, crossing his arms.

“Who says I’m interested in anything?” Eyebrow raised, quick glance up. That is all. A very slight challenge. 

But John knows him well, by now, too well, and he says as much, smiling, winning. Watching. 

Sherlock backs down first. “Lestrade,” he murmurs, “says there’s a second body. Like the first—cause of death unknown. If words gets out there will be panic in the streets.” The corner of his mouth curls up a bit on the word _panic_ and John shakes his head, tiny smile mirroring Sherlock’s tiny smile; somewhere, Lestrade is nearing a panic himself. Always such a bother for him when the masses start to worry.

*

Molly is waiting for them at the morgue, because Lestrade told her they were coming or because she knows too well what will draw Sherlock to Bart’s. Her eyes flick over his face as she unzips the body bag. “Just like the last one,” she says; it feels like chatter to fill silence, and John’s not sure that Sherlock can hear her, or that he cares. “No clues—”

“No clues that you can see,” Sherlock answers, and that’s that, then, that’s it.

Still. Molly’s biting the corner of her lip and it’s clear what she’s thinking. One cannot help but think it. John is thinking it.

 _Peculiarity of the weather_.

“Do you think that it could have been—?” she asks, leaning in. John’s hands clench at his sides.

“No.” He straightens, he looks right at her; the room has no windows but the fog has a presence. Or they imagine its presence. “I do not think it could be.”


End file.
